Remote control toys, and especially remote controlled planes and cars, have enjoyed considerable popularity for numerous years. However, significant practice is often needed to operate such toys as the manual controls are typically less than intuitive. More recently, some remote controlled toys have entered the market in which the toy is controlled via one or more motion sensors and/or display of an iPad (e.g., AR quadricopter, Parrot Inc.). Additionally, the remote controlled toy may include a video camera that provides a video feed back to the display of the tablet computer. While such control mechanism and user interaction is improved to at least some degree, various drawbacks still remain. Most significantly, control of the toy may be confusing as the user sees both, the video camera feedback from the toy on the iPad and the actual toy in its environment.
To improve visual gaming experience in tablet devices without remote control toys, various virtual targets or guns may be simulated and overlaid onto a displayed environment on a screen of a tablet device where the camera of the device provides the signals for display of the environment. Using touch sensitive controls and a virtual gun on the display, the virtual targets can then be attacked on the screen in a realistic environment captured by the camera. In another example of non-toy mixed reality control, a camera of a tablet device captures information of a real object that is also displayed on the screen of the tablet device. Image analysis can then be used to provide remote control/operation of the visually acquired object. For example, a user can control transactions (e.g., product selection, payment, etc.) of a vending machine by performing the transactions in a series of simulated operations on the screen. As will be readily appreciated, such remote control often requires substantial processing and dedicated equipment and has to the best of the inventor's knowledge not been implemented with a remote controlled toy.
In still further well-known methods of image manipulation without remote controlled toys, a uniform background of a digitally acquired image can be substituted with a video stream by substituting the background color (typically a green screen) with the video stream. While such image manipulation is well established, substitution of background color does not provide a remote control.
Therefore, even though many systems and methods for image manipulation and toy control are known in the art, numerous drawbacks remain. Consequently, there is still a need to provide improved methods and systems for remote controlled toys, especially in combination with a mixed reality remote control.